


Silence is Golden

by TimeTravelFreak



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Gen, and doesn't know it, complicated familial relationships, erwin is jean's dad, erwin isn't as oblivious as he seems, jean is a good liar, jean loves his mom, levi is curious, mentions of past erwin/ofc, possible spoilers for the latest manga chapters, she loves him too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:51:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1405504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimeTravelFreak/pseuds/TimeTravelFreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for the SnK kink meme.</p>
<p>Jean is used to it being just his mother and him. When she tells him his father is still alive he has to decide what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence is Golden

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/2124.html?thread=2298700

As long as he could remember, it had always only been Jean and his mother. They had lived a little removed from other people and it was only as he had gotten older that he realised why people whispered about and avoided them.

It was because he didn't have a father.

From what he had picked up from the gossips on the streets, his mother had simply shown up one day, pregnant and with a pile of money. She had bought a small two-storey house, using the ground floor as rooms for a bakery.

All that and no sign of a ring on her finger.

His mother was a good-looking woman, even now that she was older, though not particularly feminine. There was steel in her eyes and a sharpness in her smile that told tales about her abilities to take care of herself. All that put together and the people in the neighbourhood had come to the conclusion that she had been the lover of a wealthy man and once she had gotten pregnant, been thrown away with some money to pave the way.

Jean looked like her, so much so, he could have been her twin had they been the same age. The same light brown hair growing darker at the roots, the same piercing eyes and thin build. There were only a few differences. His mother's face was rounder, softer than his own, more feminine, her skin darker, her chin a little more pointed.

Still, those differences weren't telling enough for Jean to be able to recognize his father should he ever see him. If he was even still alive.

He had asked his mother about him just once. It had been in the evening after coming home from playing in the streets. He had been seven and, already blunt and straightforward, had confronted her with what he had heard.

He hadn't known what he had expected her to do, but he had known that he hadn't expected her to laugh.

And laugh she did. She laughed and laughed and laughed, until she had to sit down on one of the chairs in the kitchen, unable to stand by herself any longer.

Jean had stared, surprised, until she had managed to get herself under control again.

In the end they had had a simple talk, one that didn't even take that long.

His mother had come from a formerly wealthy family with a bit of land left. Her parents had died in an accident and left everything to her. The accident had been unexpected and brutal and she hadn't been prepared at all to be left alone. In an attempt to deal with her grief, she had gone to the nearby town and spent the night with a soldier, someone from the Survey Corps.

She had liked him and while she never told him her name, she had started to meet him every now and then. He had been young and wounded in spirit by the Corps' encounter with Titans and there was little which drew a woman more than an attractive man with pain in his eyes.

But she had gotten careless and after a few months she had realised that she was pregnant. She had also immediately known that there was no was she was ever going to tell the soldier about it.

“He was a good man,” she told him, a fond smile on her lips. “He would have taken care of us. But I knew that I would only ever be second to the Titans in his mind and while I liked him, I didn't like him enough, or know him enough, to bind myself to him for the rest of my life.”

So she had decided not to see him again, had sold her property and moved to Trost, bought a small house and opened a bakery. She had always loved to bake, since she had been a little girl and while she was prone to setting the kitchen on fire when it came to every-day cooking, she was fantastic with baked goods of every kind.

It had been a shock, despite what he had already suspected, that he had been an accident, something unneeded, but seeing the look on his face, his mother had been quick to reassure him.

“You weren't planned, but that never stopped me from loving you. The moment I felt you in my stomach, I knew that I wanted to keep you. You are my sunshine, my precious darling and I wouldn't trade you for the world.” She had reached out and gently run her fingers through his hair.

And, surprisingly, that had been enough for him. He hadn't gotten his straightforward nature from nowhere and even back then he had known that she would never lie to him.

In the end she had only asked him one question.

“Do you want to know who he is?”

Jean had hesitated then, before deciding.

“No. He is a soldier right? In the Survey Corps? Everyone says that the soldiers there die sooner or later. I don't want to know about him and then be told he died somewhere, eaten by a Titan,” he had told her and she had smiled wryly, and told him that he shouldn't always listen to what others said.

They had made dinner, together, since Jean valued his life, and that had been the end of it.

Or it should have been.

* * *

Wall Maria fell and with it things changed.

There was a flood of refugees into Wall Rose. Food grew sparse, even with rationing, and in the end the government decided to send people out to reclaim Wall Maria. Not only refugees, but also people from the outer districts, paying their families money to get them to participate.

It was useless.

Trost was a gate-city and Jean and his mother had watched with baited breath as more people than they could count passed through it into the Titan-infested outer wall.

Both of them had grown gaunt and there were lines on his mother's face which there hadn't been before. Jean knew that the sight of child-refugees pained her and that she sometimes gave them her own rations, but never said anything.

It hurt, to see her like that and it was then, that Jean decided to join the Military Police. He had never told her, but every now and then, when he had lain in bed, he had dreamt of joining the Survey Corps and fighting Titans. 

Every child dreamed of it at least once, especially one who knew they had a parent there.

But seeing only a handful people return through the gate after seeing so many leave had been a shock to his system.

Fighting against Titans was useless.

One fifth of humanity's population lost in weeks and they had been unable to seal Wall Maria, had been unable to fight back against the overwhelming hunger of the Titans.

And Jean looked at the his mother's face, saw the gauntness of her cheeks, the pain in her eyes and decided that he wouldn't have anything to do with that. He would join the Military Police, go to the safest place behind the Walls and take his mother with him.

The Survey Corps, he decided, was just something for people who wanted to die an early death.

* * *

When he told his mother about that, she had smiled at him gently and told him to do whatever he wanted.

Jean had nodded and, at night, pretended to be asleep when she came into his room, sat at his bedside and wept.

* * *

He had wanted to join the Military Police. So why was it that he had ended up in the Survey Corps?

If he hadn't felt such despair at the situation, he would have laughed at the irony. 

Him. 

In the Survey Corps. 

Even now the thought made his hands tremble.

When Trost had been attacked, Jean had been anxious. More than anxious. Not only for himself and his friends, but also for his mother. 

He knew she could take care of herself and they had lived halfway across town from the gate, but seeing Titans rampage around in the areas he had grown up in still sent a chill down his spine.

The only comfort he had had, sitting on a rooftop and cursing the supply teams for not coming to replenish their gas, was that at least she would be safe.

Then things had changed again. He had had to lead people. He had had to use his comrades as decoys. He had killed a Titan.

And then Eren had shown up in Titan form and saved them. After that everything had gone so fast that Jean had barely been able to process it all.

Time had only returned to its usual pace once he had found Marco's corpse. Half eaten, lying against a half-collapsed building, traces of a Titan all around him, but nobody who could tell Jean what had happened to him.

And so he he had joined the Survey Corps, something he had sworn to never do. 

When he thought back, maybe his mother had already known what was going to happen. Maybe she had known that he would end up like his father and join the Corps, join the group whose members had such a short life-expectancy.

He didn't ask her about it. 

What he did do, after he had decided to join the Corps during the fire which ate at what was left of his best friend's body, was tell her about his decision and ask her whether she was able to live with it.

She had smiled sadly, wrapped her arms around him and rested her face against his neck. With a start, Jean realised he was taller than her, if only by a little.

“You've already made up your mind,” she told him. “And I know better than try to change it now. You're as stubborn as me and in the end we would only end up fighting.

So I want you to promise me one thing,” she said, finally raising her head, grasping his chin in an unforgivable grip and moving his head so she could meet his eyes.

“You promise me that you'll fight to come back alive. I don't care if you lose all your limbs, if you hit your head so hard that you don't recognize me, I don't give a damn about whether you wish you had died in a battlefield or been able to shield a comrade.”

Her eyes blazed with an intimidating amber colour and Jean had to swallow when he heard what she was saying, knowing as well as she did, that nothing she had mentioned hadn't already happened to someone before.

“I want you to promise me that you will fight to come back to me, even if you have to crawl.”

It sounded strange, but something had unclenched in his chest when he had heard that. 

He knew that most people who joined the Survey Corps weren't fighting to live. They fought because they hated Titans, because they hated being stuck behind walls, because they had family who had been killed by Titans, because they wanted to die but were too scared to do it themselves or too stubborn to go down any other way but fighting, or even because they were criminals with no other choice.

Even as he had made the decision to join the Corps, he had had no illusions about his survival, had broken out in cold sweat as he wondered how he would meet his end.

To be told straight up that he wasn't allowed to die just like that, that he had to think, to fight, to do everything and anything in his power to come back, was like a burden being lifted off his shoulders.

“I promise,” he told her, feeling a smile tug at his mouth in a way that felt unfamiliar but also a lot like relief.

They had spent the next few days quietly together and it was only on the last day, the day before he was supposed to attend the graduation ceremony and sign up for the branch of military he had chosen, that his mother sat down with him again to talk.

“Do you want to know about your father?”

Startled he looked at her, not really sure what to make of it? 

“What? Is he still alive?” To give himself time he answered with a caustic comment, one which made his mother roll her eyes.

“Yes, he is still alive and I'm asking if you want to know who he is so you won't have to wonder every time you meet a soldier my age,” she replied.

Jean hesitated.

It was one thing to not care about your father when he was miles away and you knew you were never going to meet him anyway. It was something completely different when you were around people you knew could be it and would have to fight with.

For just a moment he considered telling her that he wanted to know, considered the unease he would feel surrounded by soldiers without knowing who of them was his father.

Then that moment passed, accompanied by a flash of memory, of a shattered house wall, a half-eaten corpse and dark ash on the skin of his palm.

“No,” he finally said. “I don't want to know. He doesn't know about me, right? Telling him would be awkward and I would be too self-conscious to interact with him.“

Besides, he thought to himself, if I don't know who he is, it means I don't have to grieve for him when he kicks the bucket.

His mother just nodded, though he got the feeling she had caught his thoughts about it.

In the end he left, his bag filled with a few of his personal things and his favourite bread and pastry to eat on the way.

The barracks had been unaffected by the invasion of the Titans, mostly because every soldier had been in the town itself to help and fight and there had been no other humans on the huge training grounds.

He made a brief stop there to drop off his things and then joined the rest of his classmates on the grounds, waiting for the ceremony to begin.

* * *

Erwin Smith couldn't be called anything but awe inspiring. His gaze was sharp enough to cut though steel and his voice was calm but carried.

Marco had told Jean that he wasn't a strong person. Now, looking at the Commander, he saw someone who could be called the definition of strong. So much so, that they made his knees shake.

Eren, Mikasa and Armin could be called strong too, but they were different from the man addressing them.

Eren was an idiot. He was strong and he never wavered from his goals, but he was also impulsive. Rather than not feeling fear, most of the time he just lashed out at the cause before the feeling could set in.

Mikasa too, was only strong under certain circumstances. Jean had watched her enough to know how easily she weakened when Eren wasn't around. She was strong only for the sake of protecting Eren and nobody else. 

If he had to choose the strongest of the three, ironically, he would choose Armin, the least physically capable of them. But Armin was brilliant and unafraid in a way that was difficult to describe but Jean couldn't deny he envied every now and then.

Still, none of them held a candle against the man in front of them who told them their chances of survival should they joint the Corps.

Jean had to swallow when he heard the numbers and figures being laid out just like that, but while a part of him was freaking out, another part of him appreciated the brutal honesty.

Most people he interacted with quickly learned that Jean had no trouble speaking his mind, pointing out unpleasant truths even if nobody wanted to hear them.

What few realised however, was that he appreciated it when someone reciprocated that. 

He and Marco hadn't become friends through Jean blurting out things and Marco enduring them. They had become friends because Marco had been honest with him, not holding anything back and just speaking his mind about things.

Jean had gotten most of his honesty from his mother, so he was used to being criticised when he made a mistake or when he screwed up. It had been difficult to adjust to people who kept their cards close to their chest. And he was good at figuring out when someone lied to him or held things back from him, which was also part of the reason he had never been good with people.

Hearing the Commander be candid with them was refreshing and admirable.

Any other man would probably have played down the numbers, making it look better than it was just to secure a few more soldiers.

Of course, Jean didn't really know whether Smith was telling the truth now either, but he had grown up in Trost, a Gate town, and from what he had seen of the soldiers who left and who came back, the numbers seemed right.

And when the Commander asked whether they were ready for what was ahead, Jean couldn't help but answer in the only way he knew.

He didn't want to die.

* * *

After entering the Survey Corps, things accelerated again, days fading into each other as the new recruits were drilled to the point of collapse.

„You'll thank us for it once we're out of the walls,“ one of their superiors told them when he heard them groan.

They were also quickly separated into groups. Jean had always been good with the 3DMG and didn't really need much instruction there, leaving him with more time to train with his new horse and to memorize the scouting formation they were being taught, along with the chores which were given new recruits.

While they had done some horse-riding during basic training, two branches out of three didn't really use them for anything other than basic riding, so they had to learn how to work together with the animals and use them in accordance with their gear.

Jean had been lucky when they had been assigned horses, his own Buchwald even-tempered and obedient. Connie had gotten stuck with a headstrong mare which barely did what he wanted, though Christa, beloved by animals of all kinds, was helping him with it.

Still, despite the help, Connie wasn't the only one who fell into bed at night and slept like the dead.

Aching muscles, headache inducing strategies and constant fatigue made it difficult to keep track of the days and the day of the wall expedition came sooner than Jean wished it did. Which was admittedly never, but even he knew that some things needed to be done, despite the fact that there was something decidedly suspicious about this mission.

The mission itself was worse than expected, with casualties higher than they had been in years and even after that things didn't get easier.

Annie as the Female Titan, Reiner and Bertoldt as accomplices and Titan Shifters, Eren being kidnapped and the frantic chase to get him back.

Titans which were humans, traitors in their ranks and more added up to a picture that was hard to swallow and even harder to digest.

Under that overwhelming flood of information and revelations, Jean would have been glad if he didn't have to deal with anything else, but it seemed as though he was eternally fated to be the world's chew-toy.

While he was still healing from being thrown off his horse when they had been following Reiner and Bertoldt, he had visited his mother at her request.

He had thought that she just wanted to make sure that he was back safe and sound, but while that was a large part of it, she also had something she wanted to tell him.

“I know that you said you didn't want to know, but after hearing about this expedition I feel I should tell you anyway. With how things are going you might not have the opportunity to change your mind about it.”

Pressing his lips into a thin line Jean had agreed, part of him relieved that his father was still alive, part of him amused. It seemed he had gotten his devil's luck from somewhere after all.

What his mother told him next let that amusement disappear as he turned pale in disbelief and shock.

Erwin Smith, she told him.

It felt as though he had been punched into the stomach. 

Despite what he had told his mother, he hadn't really expected to run into his father. The Survey Corps were the smallest branch of the military, but despite that, there were still a couple hundred people in their ranks and to be honest he hadn't expected his father to be anything special.

He had interacted with the Commander several times before – even in his own mind he was unable to call the man anything but by his title – in strategy sessions and short conversations when he had had to deliver papers or do other chores nearby.

Jean felt unbalanced by the fact that the man he had been talking to all this time had been his father.

That the leader of the Survey Corps was his parent, that he was related to the Commander, who didn't bat an eyelid when he had to send half of his soldiers into their deaths.

The Commander who had just lost an arm in the last battle, and who was still fighting off an infection.

He swallowed thickly.

His mothers mouth tightened in sympathy and she gently squeezed his shoulder before leaving the room to give him time to think. 

And think he did.

* * *

The thing was, he didn't understand Erwin. He admired the man's strength and shrewdness, he appreciated his blunt honesty, he trusted that he would do everything in his power to make sure humanity survived and won the fight against the Titans.

But he didn't understand him.

When he had led his classmates into the storage facilities he had first gotten a taste of how difficult it was to lead, had realised the heavy burden it was to prioritize the lives to the many over the lives of the few.

Jean hated making sacrifices.

Most of that was because he wanted to live. It was such an ingrained need by now that he barely even thought about it. It had soaked into his bones down to his marrow. And he knew, with utmost certainty, that he wasn't the only one who thought that way.

To condemn people who felt the same thing as him, who wanted to live as badly as he did to death wasn't something he felt he could do.

And still, Erwin did this every time they left the safety of the Walls – though as it seemed, the Walls themselves might be more dangerous than they had ever thought they could be.

And it was terrible that the only thing he could think about, when he considered the man who was supposed to be his father, was the piles of bodies Erwin had left in his wake.

Jean wasn't foolish enough to believe that a man like the Commander would be unable to see what a kid like Jean could. The man had to be aware of what the people following him were feeling, that they didn't want to die.

And still he carried that burden.

He thought back to what little he had heard of the deceased Special Operations Squad, to the deaths of the other squad leaders and clenched his fists.

* * *

He had planned on avoiding the man, something which had seemed easy when one one considered that the Commander was still on bed-rest and unlikely to be moving around.

Then one of his superiors had shoved a tray with food at him and told him to get that to their leader and not to drop it. The orders were accompanied with a suspicious glare and and a threatening expression that made it obvious how protective everyone was of the Commander, aware that if they wanted to fight the Titans successfully, Erwin Smith was a necessary existence.

So Jean had nodded, taken the tray and made his way to the room he had been trying to avoid to the best of his ability. While on the way, he hoped he would meet someone whom he could shove the tray at, or maybe someone who told him he wasn't allowed to come near it or maybe just someone else in the room with the Commander, so he wouldn't have to be alone with him.

So that he wouldn't say anything stupid.

None of his hopes were rewarded. The corridors were empty and, when he knocked on the door, only the Commander's voice answered him.

He opened the door and, as expected, was alone with the man. Erwin was sitting up, supported by pillows, a stack of papers on top of the covers and a pen in his left hand. 

The sleeve of his right arm was shockingly empty.

Swallowing nervously, he greeted his superior politely and held up the tray.

“I was instructed to take this to you and take it back once you are done,” he said, fighting to keep his expression neutral.

Erwin nodded gently, carefully set the pen down and started to gather the papers into a loose pile before shoving it to the side, a clumsiness to his movements that revealed that he was originally right-handed.

Jean felt awkward just standing there, but waited until Erwin looked up again before he came closer and carefully handed the man the tray.

It wasn't heavy and the only fluids were two cups, one filled with water, the other with stew, so there was little chance of the Commander spilling anything. On the plate there was some bread, cut open and filled with something Jean couldn't make out.

After he was sure that the man had a secure grip on the tray he let go, taking a few steps back again.

“Would you like me to leave while you eat?” he asked, unsure of what to do now.

Erwin paused for a moment, the tray balanced in his lap, his remaining hand wrapped around the cup filled with soup.

“You don't have to stay if you have something else to do,” he said, “but otherwise I wouldn't mind the company.”

So Jean nodded and took a seat on one of the chairs positioned around the bed.

He deliberately took one which blocked his sight of the empty sleeve, his mind conjuring up images of another body missing not only an arm, but also part of its face.

“Is something the matter?“ The Commander's voice tore him from his memories and with a start Jean realised he had been staring.

“It's nothing,” he said slowly, but Erwin just raised an eyebrow, some of the lines in his unshaven face deepening.

Wincing slightly, in the end Jean just decided to be honest. It wasn't as though the Commander hadn't already realised that he was just an honest idiot.

“I was just thinking how lucky you were that that,” he nodded vaguely into the direction of Erwin's missing arm “was the only thing you lost in that fight.”

Erwin second brow rose to join the first and for a moment Jean feared he had angered the man before he noticed the slight curl at the corner of his mouth.

“A surprising statement, but nothing I haven't thought about myself,” the older man admitted and Jean's shoulders relaxed.

In the end, that broke the ice and they discussed how people were reacting to having their Commander bedridden, how to improve training and analysing the battle with Reiner and Bertoldt.

“There were a lot of people from the Military Police getting in the way and getting eaten,“ Jean remembered, annoyance in his tone and Erwin shot him a curious look.

“Considering you yourself wanted to join them that is quite the unexpected statement.“

Jean could feel his face flush. “I didn't know you knew about that.”

“Keith Shadis was the Commander of the Survey Corps once and he still comes to visit every now and then,” Erwin told him. “And one of the things he does is give us the low down on any potential recruits and interesting students.

Still, it's quite an extreme shift from the Military Police to the Survey Corps and you were in the top ten too, weren't you?”

“Well, yes,” he admitted. “One of the perks of joining the Military Police is housing for families and pretty good pay together with the safety of the innermost Wall, so...”

“You have family?”

And unexpectedly the conversation had taken a turn into the direction he least wanted it to take.

Being the world's chew-toy sucked, though he guessed he still had it easy compared to others.

“Just my mother,” he answered carefully, already anticipating the next question and not liking it.

“And your father?” The Commander raised his cup again, draining the last remains of the soup and setting it down carefully beside his empty plate, having eaten during their conversation.

For a moment, just a moment, Jean considered telling the man.

Then that moment passed and he answered easily.

“It's always just been me and my mother. I'm told he passed away when I was young.”

He looked Erwin straight in the eyes when he lied. Jean was usually honest to a fault and because of that, people usually assumed that just because he disliked doing it, he was a bad liar.

That couldn't be more untrue. Especially because he lied so rarely and because he was usually so honest, people didn't expect it of him when he was dishonest.

And when he didn't have any other choice but lie, like now, there were only few people who could pick up on it.

And it was necessary that he lied.

The Commander bore the burden of ordering his soldiers to risk and lose their lives to further humanity. Doing that to comrades and friends was hard enough, but to knowingly send your own flesh and blood to die wasn't something he could ever allow this man to do.

Erwin Smith already carried enough, without adding that to his list.

So Jean lied, changed the topic and, when the Commander was done, gathered the tray and left the room, pausing at the door for just a moment.

“Please take care of yourself. Being reckless isn't something which suits you,” he said, knowing it was rude, but unable to help himself.

A short glance backwards showed him that Erwin's lips were twitching, though his voice and mine were serious when he replied.

“I will.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

“And, did he come by?” Levi gracelessly slumped into one of the chairs at his bedside and crossed his legs almost impatiently.

Erwin rolled his eyes a little, used to the man as he was.

“Yes he did. It was... interesting.”

The moment he had seen Jean for the first time, he had been reminded of a woman he had once known, years ago.

In a time when he had been about to despair because of the losses he had had to endure, she had been a breath of fresh air and he had enjoyed being with her while it had lasted.

He had always wondered what had become of her, though he had respected her too much to actually try to investigate. And anyway, by that time he had had other troubles.

Still, it had been a surprise to see a boy joining their ranks who had looked so much like her and after that it had been easy to do the Math, count back the years and the months and Erwin had soon guessed the reason for her disappearance.

Of course, he couldn't be sure, but even just a possibility was more than he had ever expected.

“Did he know?” Levi's face was expressionless, but the slight tilt of his head betrayed his curiosity.

Erwin thought back to their conversation, trying to guess what the boy had been thinking about in the pause before he had replied to his question about a father.

“If he knows, he didn't say anything,” he finally shrugged. “And anyway, it's not like I'm a hundred percent sure, it's just a suspicion.”

“And because you almost died you decided to meet the boy just to check?”

Erwin's lips formed into an ironic smile. Levi always knew how to get to the core of the matter.

“It's the manner of man to want to leave something behind when they die,“ he told the shorter man, who just snorted.

„It's unlike you to be this sentimental,“ Levi said and Erwin grinned a little.

„Someone told me something similar today, though I believe they mentioned recklessness.“

Levi's eyes narrowed, not in annoyance, but in amusement. “They weren't wrong about that either.

Will you contact his mother? We have his address on file.“

The sudden change of topic was to be expected and Erwin allowed himself a quiet sigh before shaking his head.

„No. If Jean knew and didn't tell me he has his reasons and if his mother didn't tell him she has her reasons too. And I don't want to be presumptuous – it's possible that I'm not his father.“

It was probably wrong of him, but he didn't want to know. As long as he wasn't a hundred percent sure, he would still be able to treat the boy like any other soldier.

Levi nodded, hesitated and then slowly spoke.

„I told you I was going to make the rest of the 104th into my new squad. I can't make any promises and I won't prioritize him, especially with Eren and Christa around, but I'll do my best to keep him out of trouble.“

Erwin smiled at his friend.

“Thank you. That is more than I could have hoped for.“


End file.
